Saint Jerome offers us the pregnant reflection that though it may be
marriage that fills the earth, it is virginity that replenishes
heaven."
The early church taught that there were enough children on earth. It
needed missionaries more than it needed babies, and impressed upon its
followers the idea that the birth wails of the infant were a protest
against being born into so sordid a world.
Thus are we presented with one of the enormous inconsistencies of the
church in sex matters. The teachings of the "Early Fathers" were
effect the advocacy of an attempt to enforce birth control through
absolute continence, while later it reverted, as it reverts to-day, to
the Mosaic injunction to "be fruitful and multiply."
The very force of the sex urge in humanity compelled the church to
abandon the teaching of celibacy for its general membership. Paul, who
preferred to see Christians unmarried rather than married, had
recognized the power of this force. In the seventh chapter of the
First Epistle to the Corinthians (according to the Douay translation
of the Vulgate, which is accepted by the Church of Rome), he said:
"8--But I say unto you the unmarried and the widows; it is good if
they continue even as I.
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